Postseason Analysis: Giants verses who?

Well, it's been awhile since I've done one of these. Coincidentally, it'll be my last for quite awhile since we lost.

I watched a good chunk of the game...but I couldn't figure out who it was the the Giants were playing. It certainly wasn't the Dallas Cowboys that I know. It was sloppy. Let's look at both sides of the ball.

Offense:
For the next several months you're going to hear all about Romo's little Mexican getaway, and how it took the focus away from football and factored into the loss.

I, however, think that the majority of the blame is to be passed to three other factors, to be discussed in a bit. Romo wasn't that bad...it was all of those wretched dropped passes (factor #1). I can think of three specific instances (and I know there are probably more than that) when a pass went right through the hands of the receiver which would have been a Dallas first down, had it been caught. Two were the fault of the player, the other is Patrick Crayton. Crayton's was the worse, (dare I say that had Crayton caught that pass then Dallas would be victorious?). Witten was the receptions king this game, catching 7 passes for 81 yards. Romo's only TD pass went to the player.

For those of you who argue that MB3 is the better back, you had your chance to see the first part of that experiment. He compiled 129 yards, but only 28 in the second half. Perhaps we should have stuck with our two back attack, as clearly MB3 was worn out and/or didn't have the same fire in his feet. JuJo had only 3 attempts for 8 yards.

Defense:
We had 3 sacks. That's about the only good thing I see. On the first drive, we couldn't stop the run if it was a donut rolling down the field. One of Toomer's TDs was just the result of Dallas defenders trying to tackle with their arms (factor #2).

Poor tackling. Put your bodies into it for crying out loud!

Yup. The defenders were where they were supposed to be, but Toomer was breaking through their arms like 5th graders playing red rover.

We struggled with pass defense, which has been our kryptonite all season.


That third factor was the penalties. 84 yards of penalties. If that 15 yard facemask was avoided at the end of the 2nd quarter then the Cowboys go into the half with the lead, instead of a tie game.


Credit must be given to the Giants, before I close. You'll hear all offseason about how the Cowboys lost, but the Giants won just as much as the Cowboys lost...if that makes sense.

After the post season (who knows, perhaps even before that time) I'll do a post on what the cowboys should do this offseason. I think we're in good shape, we'll be losing some people but there aren't any losses that will be incredibly harmful.

Provided we take the right steps, we can be an even greater threat to the NFC.